AP fileMuhammad Ali, left, rides onto the field with Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria during Opening Day events on April 4.

By DAVID STEELE
While we question whether Jeffrey Loria’s borderline-criminal operation of the Miami Marlins makes him the worst owner in North American professional sports today, ponder this:

He’s got a lot of competition.

Too much, actually. For example, Loria happens to run a club in the only major sport that hasn’t conducted a lockout in the last two years. The NHL is shut down at this very moment. The NBA closed for business for two months last year. The NFL, never to be outdone, has managed two lockouts in that span, of players and refs.

For another example, Loria leads the Major League Baseball pack only by the grace of Bud Selig, who finally saw fit to wrest control of the Dodgers away from the previous title-holder, Frank McCourt. Meanwhile, Fred Wilpon, who put the Mets in jeopardy by engaging with convicted crook Bernie Madoff, still lurks to give Loria a run for the top spot.

All told, the sports world is literally crawling with lowlifes who happen to occupy the most powerful positions in the industry. With his systematic looting of his roster and the defrauding of his home market illustrated by Tuesday’s giveaway to the Blue Jays, Loria keeps slithering above them all.

Or, for accuracy’s sake, below them.

He might be dragging the business to a new low, in fact. With everything factored in, we might be living through a Golden Age of Terrible Owners. Individually and collectively, we might be at rock-bottom ... except you can never assume that someone isn’t willing and able to drag the concept of “ownership” even deeper into the muck.

Granted, that’s saying a lot. This is the same business that once banded together, across every sport, to keep anyone who wasn’t white off the field for more than half a century. The bar is high.

Over the decades, sports owners have cheated players, abandoned cities, blackmailed politicians and taxpayers, forced strikes and lockouts and lied to anyone and everyone they felt they had to in order to get what they wanted.

Now, though? There are so many more teams and so much more money to be made ... and it’s created fertile ground for a bigger class of bottom-feeders than at any other time.

Which leaves the supporters of those sports, those teams, those owners, to ask: what do we do about it?

For one: get with the times. The response to such abuse of their money, time and emotion historically has been to forgive, forget and misdirect. Forgive the teams, leagues and owners as soon as the games are back and the entertainment returns. Forget the pain they had just caused, because you just can’t live without them.

And direct your rage at some player for being “overpaid." Somehow, eventually, the villains end up being A-Rod, LeBron, Michael Vick or whomever is making too much money for playing a kid’s game. They’re the ones who are destroying the sport they once knew and making things tough on owners who have a right to make a profit.

In the Marlins’ case for most of the season, of course, that target was Jose “$106 Million” Reyes, who merely didn’t play that well. He didn’t steal that money. The guy who paid it to him? He’s the thief.

Reyes is now gone in the housecleaning. So is Ozzie Guillen, another convenient scapegoat. Loria is still there, as he’s always been, through all the firings, roster-guttings and shady stadium dealings. Don’t lose focus.

In 2012, we’re too smart to follow the same patterns of blame. It’s way past time for the real people responsible for making entire swaths of the population miserable, to be truly held accountable - by words and actions.

No better example exists than in Miami right now, among the most beleaguered baseball fans in the land.

As it was pointed out here not long ago, Miami and its baseball fans deserve better. Loria’s franchise, meanwhile, deserves every empty seat they got last season in the nearly-$700 million new ballpark they scammed out of the taxpayers. It’s earned every dime local residents haven't spent on it, and won't.

And every syllable of scorn, bitterness and hatred being vented at Loria for his transparently greedy, hyper-cynical, self-centered moves ... yeah, he deserves that, too.

But the hard work is still ahead.

Unlike underperforming players and coaches, rotten owners can’t be fired or traded. Even though a trade is exactly how Loria ended up running the Marlins and why Montreal no longer has a team, for which baseball and Selig still should be ashamed. Involved in that deal also was John Henry, now owner of the Red Sox, who conducted his own salary dump this year, making someone else pay for his ineptitude again. It’s owners’ privilege.

The only recourse is for the public to turn the heat up on these very owners who now feel entitled to take everything and give nothing. Never let up on them until they start doing right by their customers, as any business is obligated to do.

Loria likes fire sales? Now that he’s started that fire, hold his feet to it and keep them there for as long as it takes.